Touching Earth Lightly

  ‘Sure is,’ said Chloe, nodding.

  Janey chose to come to Chloe’s on Tuesday. She was happier and more relaxed than Chloe had seen her in a long while; there was a softness about her eyes, a pleasant dreaminess. They sat up talking in the dining room, because everyone else was out at the half-price movies. At around eleven Isaac, Rachel and Nick came back.

  ‘Look at you: two wise monkeys,’ said Nick, for they were both nursing mugs of hot chocolate, both swathed in dark jumpers, both peering up curiously.

  Isaac did a double-take. ‘God, Janey, you look amazing!’

  ‘Why, thaink yew,’ said Janey smugly and fluttered her eyelashes at Chloe, who laughed.

  ‘This is Rachel, Janey. This is Janey, Rachel,’ said Nick.

  ‘Janey had floor-length black dreadlocks last time I saw her,’ Isaac explained to Rachel.

  ‘And make-up you could scrape off with a knife,’ added Nick, eyeing Janey’s clean face.

  ‘Yep, this is the new me,’ said Janey nervously into the appreciative silence that followed.

  Chloe looked at the ‘new’ Janey. Chloe had always known about this naked face; it wasn’t new to her. Did it actually look better? Isaac and Nick probably found it less threatening than the old one, felt easier with it; maybe that made it more attractive to them.

  Rachel went up to the bathroom, and Nick began lining up mugs and milk. Isaac sat about halfway down the table. ‘So how’s your new place, Janey?’

  ‘It’s fab. I love it,’ said Janey.

  ‘It’s all Janey-fied now,’ said Chloe. ‘It’s a mad room. You should have Janey as interior decorator when you set up Hunter Goldman. You could be Knott Hunter Goldman.’

  ‘Hunter Goldman—not,’ said Nick, watching the mugs circle in the microwave. ‘That’d be about right, the way we’re going.’

  ‘Besides,’ said Janey. ‘I couldn’t do it for someone else’s room. I don’t know what anyone else likes—only me.’

  ‘You know what I like,’ Chloe countered.

  Janey screwed up her eyes at her. ‘I guess I could,’ she said doubtfully, ‘do up a room for you.’

  ‘My room’s already got pretty obvious Janey touches in it, with the costumes on the wall, and the shelf-stuff that you keep fiddling with and putting in those weird groups.’

  Janey laughed. ‘They’re little Andy Goldsworthy cairns, like in your book,’ she explained to Isaac.

  ‘Except they’re made of all my earrings, tangled up together—’

  ‘Well, you hardly ever wear those dangly ones—’

  ‘Well, I won’t be able to, ever again, now they’re in that little beehive. And all my make-up, all balanced so that the whole thing falls to bits the minute I pick anything up—’

  ‘I wish she’d use false fingernails, so I could do one of those pufferfish thingies,’ Janey confided to Isaac. ‘It’s all right,’ she added hastily to Chloe. ‘I’d do it on your desk and then just take a photo of it and tidy it away.’

  ‘You could do it at your place, now,’ Chloe pointed out. ‘Just buy some sets yourself.’

  ‘I could.’ Janey considered it. ‘But somehow it wouldn’t have the same … the same …’

  ‘The same artistic validity as using found objects,’ said Isaac deadpan, nodding understandingly. Nick snorted.

  ‘Yeah!’ Janey grinned at Isaac. ‘Took the words outa my mouth.’

  Rachel came back in. She was wearing some kind of scent, spicy and mysterious. Chloe was enchanted by it even as she resented it invading everyone’s nostrils. Had she just refreshed it, up there in the bathroom? She wore a cream-coloured jumper as seductively soft-looking as the scent was enchanting—Chloe could imagine how it would feel to touch, to hug. She scratched the palms of her hands in irritation. Isaac was pulling out the chair next to him for Rachel.

  ‘So. Good movie?’ Chloe asked them.

  Isaac and Rachel looked undecided. ‘It was okay …’ Rachel began.

  ‘It died in the bum,’ said Nick, stirring.

  ‘Yeah, it started off all right, didn’t it?’ said Isaac. ‘Then it just went on and on. By the end of it you got sick of the same two faces emoting on the screen.’

  ‘Oh well, we won’t bother with it, then, will we, Janey?’

  ‘Nah, give that one the flick,’ said Janey. Chloe saw that she was exchanging a look with Nick. Oh, bugger, not this again, she thought, and gave Janey a kick and a look. Janey looked back at her evenly, as if it was beneath her dignity to acknowledge the kick.

  Nick brought Isaac and Rachel their mugs and sat with his own at the far end of the table. ‘Mum and Dad still out?’ he asked Chloe.

  ‘And Pete.’

  ‘Let’s have some music, then.’

  ‘Oh, not—’ Chloe began to moan.

  ‘It’s all right, I’ve got something appropriate.’ He went out and Chloe heard him going upstairs.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Chloe. ‘He’ll bring down some Miami goon music that’ll send us all round the twist.’ She rolled her eyes at Rachel, who smiled neutrally.

  Nick came down and through the door Chloe saw him crouch in front of the CD player. A moment later the dining room seemed to open out into an echoing space of rainy jungle, into which eased ripples of tribal drumming and an insinuating flute. The conversation around the table died, because the flute was like a voice expecting to be heard and listened to, to be allowed to speak its tale. Nick came in and handed the CD case to Isaac. Rachel leaned against Isaac’s shoulder to read with him, and Chloe saw Isaac adjust his body to accommodate her presence, her weight.

  Couples, she thought in dismay, intercepting another of Nick’s glances towards Janey. Janey looked at Chloe and flashed her eyes in a way that disguised what she was thinking, as if Chloe couldn’t guess. Chloe listened to the flute and to the beat of some bass instrument beneath it, possibly stringed. If the music had not been so beautiful she would have gone up to bed, and left Nick and Janey to work out what they would. Would it be so terrible now? Maybe the flicker of panic she felt was just habitual, left over from that other time. If Janey were more often like this, happy, funny, easy in herself, outward-looking, if she and Nick got together and Nick’s attention somehow managed to hold her at this point of balance …

  Chloe looked around at them all, quiet in the spell of the music. Well, maybe life would be more normal, then, for Janey and thus for all Chloe’s family. She looked at Janey listening, chin in hands, and wondered how she could think of this person, the hidden wealth of this person and the way she ranged from extreme to extreme of her boundaries, as a burden. Hadn’t she made Chloe open her eyes and see, well, pretty well every major thing worth seeing since they first started high school together? Hadn’t she sparked off so many thousands of wondering thoughts, about people and how they worked, how they ought to work but didn’t, how the world worked all around them, because of and in spite of them? Wasn’t she grateful? Didn’t she owe Janey any help, any support Janey might need?

  The piece ended, and everyone made waking-up, appreciative noises. ‘I’ll turn the rest down,’ said Nick, getting up. ‘It’s only that first track that’s worth listening to up loud.’

  Janey got up and went out to the lounge room after him with the CD case. ‘Where’d you find this?’ she asked, and threw herself on a couch. Nick perched on the back of the other one to answer.

  Isaac lifted an eyebrow at Chloe. ‘She seems … happy.’

  Chloe tried out a number of answers in her head—Yeah, for now/Come back next week, why don’t you—but she wasn’t willing to use any of them in front of Rachel; she didn’t want to make Janey out as a basket case, or herself as best friend of a basket case. She nodded non-committally in the end, but she’d left it so long, the delay kind of negated it. She felt as if one of her arms had fallen off, leaving a cold, unbalancing space beside her.

  She got up and went through the lounge room. Nick was talking about ordering CDs on the Internet from America, and Janey—yes,
she did look better this way, more approachable, less threateningly unusual—Janey was listening as if, hmm, yes, she would just pop home to her laptop and have a go at that herself.

  ‘I’m going to hit the hay, so I’ll see you guys later,’ said Chloe.

  ‘Yeah, I’ll head home soon, too. See you, Cole,’ said Janey.

  ‘’Night,’ said Nick.

  It wasn’t as if she were busting to be part of a couple with someone, Chloe told herself as she pulled her pyjamas on. It was just that watching couples form was not her favourite way of passing the time. She went to bed with the radio muttering on her night table so that she couldn’t listen for, wouldn’t hear … anything outside her room. And if she did, she would just turn the radio up a bit louder.

  She got up early next morning. She had the dress rehearsal to think of, but also a cold, self-punishing curiosity drove her. It was necessary to know when Janey had left—if Janey had left. She passed Nick’s room. The door was flung open and there was no one in either bed—good. Downstairs, everyone was getting through breakfast, scattered about the table. Nick looked, well, normal—or was he just trying to look normal?

  She poured herself coffee and felt in the mood for a cigarette with it. She sat down with the mug stinging her hands and felt her stomach shrink from the first hot, nutrient-free swallow. Nick, digging through porridge, looked up at her without interest.

  ‘Janey stay long?’ she asked as his eyes glided off her. Come on, hit me with it. As if he would, with all the others there.

  He shook his head, chewing warily.

  ‘Oh, good. So you didn’t have to cope with her for too long?’

  Dane looked up from the paper at the aggression in her voice—at her, at Nick, who made a non-committal face and devoted himself wholly to his porridge.

  ‘Was something wrong?’ Dane asked Chloe in an undertone.

  ‘Ah, no. Everything was lovely.’ Chloe considered adding Wasn’t it, Nick?, but thought she already sounded bitter and twisted enough. Nick wasn’t pretending; nothing had happened with him and Janey, and next time they met Janey would be at a different point in her cycle and kill off whatever spark of interest he had felt. There was nothing to be afraid of.

  Was she afraid? She tried to work out exactly what feelings were swirling around inside her, but her unused anger against Nick muddied everything, as did the spin of the caffeine in her brain. She would keep her mouth shut until it all settled. She cast a smoothing-things-over smile at Dane and got up to get herself some proper food.

  Everyone else had left for school and university and work, but Chloe was still rushing around the house hunting her wallet, the departure time of her train burning in her head. At a knock on the front door, she gave in and swore. Then found the wallet on the telephone table. And Janey in crisis on the doorstep.

  ‘Cole …’

  ‘I’m in a rush. It’s full dress rehearsal today. I’ve got to go now, I’m running late—’

  ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Come too. We can talk on the train.’ She deadlocked the door and shut it, hoping the rush to the station would distract Janey. She didn’t like her hunched look, her rubbed eyes.

  Sweating inside her coat, she led her up the hill and through the shops to the station. Whenever she glanced back Janey had that strained, whitened look. Chloe kept waiting for a joke that never came. She felt she was dragging her along on a string. Waiting to cross the thundering intersection, Janey said, ‘It didn’t work—none of it worked!’ And looked at Chloe, tears welling, her face bare, pitiful and lost and small without the hair.

  The lights changed. Chloe took Janey’s hand and dragged her across to the station, punched out two tickets from the machine, nearly carried Janey down the long, steep steps to the waiting train.

  She found them a seat at the back of the half-full carriage, took Janey’s other hand. ‘Now, what? What’s going on?’ Her mind was still hurrying, running for the train.

  ‘Nathan—’ Janey got out; then her head went down and Chloe felt tears on her hands, felt Janey shudder all through.

  ‘He found you.’ Janey nodded. ‘Worse.’ Another nod. ‘Oh, bugger him.’

  Janey said something.

  ‘What?’ Chloe feared to hear more.

  ‘I said, please—don’t—swear!’ Janey wrenched her hands free and fell against the seat, weeping uncontrollably.

  Chloe’s face was hot and slippery. She took off her coat. Stuff Nathan. Stuff him. I hate him. I could kill him. She felt wilted and exhausted. She lifted heavy arms and laid them around her friend. She was getting anxious looks from other passengers. The train slowed towards the next station and several people got up—to move downstairs, Chloe thought sourly, not to get off the train. She shut them all out, glaring across the suburbs, Janey’s unfamiliar blonde skull in her shoulder.

  ‘He said—’ gulped Janey when the train moved off again, ‘he said—’d always find me.’

  ‘That’s just intimidation; it’s a standard tactic. It’s not true.’ Janey cried on, not believing her. Did she even believe it herself? ‘It’s not like he had far to look. Those guys who did over your room could’ve told him, hey.’ Janey curled up against her, and Chloe saw briefly, in the crotch of her black jeans, a small circle of wetness; the tan stitching had darkened to red. ‘Did he hurt you?’

  Janey nodded, worked herself to a pause. ‘He’s been working out. He’s really strong. And he was angry, and—and—and … rough.’

  ‘This isn’t your period, then, this blood?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ Janey hiccupped.

  ‘Where was Bette?’

  ‘Ouch—ouch—out shopping! Oh, Cole, I’ve got no one else except you, man! I’m so sorry!’ And she was gone again.

  ‘God, you’ve got nothing to be sorry about. And there isn’t just me—’ She wished it were true, knew it ought to be. ‘There are people who’d know exactly what to do for you, who deal with this every day.’

  ‘Oh, the caring professions,’ Janey spat. ‘They aren’t what I need! To go through all that talking again, explaining, watching their faces change—like, “This is disgusting but I’m too professional to show it.” I’ve seen them. I hate all that. I hate seeing that my whole life disgusts people, that it’s a big dirty hole I’m always having to be dragged out of. At least you know, and your mum, that I’m not—I’m not all—’ She put her head down on her knees again and shook with sobs.

  Chloe held Janey’s unyielding shins, laid her hands on the knots of her fists.

  ‘I don’t know, maybe I am!’ Janey’s voice fluted high with despair. ‘I can’t see—’

  Chloe held Janey’s head in her hands and pressed her own forehead against it. This is what it feels like to pray. Please tell me what to do.

  ‘And he said he would stay in my room—he shouted after me, “I’ll be waiting!” And I—and I—left my photos there! I was running—away!—didn’t have time!’

  ‘It’s okay, it’s okay. It wasn’t Eddie himself—just photographs.’

  ‘But—I can’t remember—was an address on—envelope! Oh God oh God—’ She collapsed on herself, then lifted her head and groaned out, ‘I can’t even protect him from two hundred kilometres away!’

  Chloe started to feel unreal, as if all this, the train interior, the tunnel noise and suburb-flash outside, were a dream inside the other reality of Janey’s fragile state, thrown by blows of terror and pain. She could feel the suck of this larger reality on her, through her hands, through her forehead, the energy being drawn off her as it had been during Eddie’s birth, to help Janey weather each new blow. She felt herself waver, and feared that there wasn’t enough of her.

  ‘I’m going to get you some help,’ she said as the train dived into the blackness under the city. ‘I could do it on my own if it weren’t now, if it weren’t today. I’ll find a phone, I’ll call the Rape Crisis Centre, I’ll put you in a taxi,’ Janey looked up imploringly. ‘I have to. This is a crime. Yo
u’re hurt, you’re in shock, and I’ve got this thing on—if it were any other day I could come with you, and you know I would.’

  ‘Please come with me? Just to drop me off? I thought the opera was at night.’

  ‘It is. Tomorrow night. Today we go through the whole thing, in costume. There are always stuff-ups to be fixed; there’s new stage machinery we haven’t worked with. Every-one’ll be—’ It seemed so frivolous. Chloe suddenly lost a handle on what was important and what wasn’t. ‘It’s not like they couldn’t whack a wig on someone and muddle through, but I’d never get to work there again—I mean, it says right there on my CV, I’m “always on time”, that’s why they hired me.’ She was talking to herself as much as to Janey. The opera was looking more like an enormous, decorated, irrelevant cake with each passing moment.

  ‘Go and see my mum, then,’ she suggested desperately. ‘Stay on the train and go back to the uni.’

  Janey uncurled and sat normally on the seat. Chloe saw her pull herself together, blocking out thought after thought, forcing herself to return to the train-interior dream-world. ‘No, I couldn’t do that,’ she said in a leaden, almost drugged voice.

  ‘Of course you could. You’ve been there with me, you remember. You know where her office is. She wouldn’t mind a bit if you turned up.’

  Janey sat on her hands and shook her head at the floor.

  ‘Can I put you in a taxi, then?’ Chloe murmured, an arm around Janey’s shoulders. She felt as if she’d asked, Can I abandon you, then? Can I give up on you? Can I shrug you off like so much unpleasant garbage in my life?

  ‘If you want. If you think—’ Two tears dripped to Janey’s knees and she looked away. The train burst out onto the bright harbour-side.

  Janey stood shaking against the telephone booth as Chloe made the call. As she explained down the line, Chloe reached out and held her hand tightly—apologising? holding her together? she didn’t know—and Janey leaned her temple against the smoked glass of the booth and closed her eyes.